CENTRAL KITSAP - Pedestrian safety around the Fairgrounds area, where hundreds of students walk to and from four schools located within roughly two miles of each other, has been a concern for parents and school and community leaders for a number of years.

It’s an issue that arises at the start of every school year and comes up again during the dark winter months. It also is thrust into the spotlight every few years when a student is injured while walking to school. That was the case in December when an Olympic High School student was seriously injured while walking in a crosswalk with her brother on their way to school.

Members of the Central Kitsap Community Council took up the discussion again Wednesday when they asked transportation engineer Jeff Shea with the county’s Department of Public Works to talk about plans to improve some of the roadways in the Fairgrounds area.

The county is updating its Transportation Improvement Program, which acts as a map for road projects across the county over a six-year period. Two projects on the list deal with improving pedestrian safety and improving traffic congestion in the Fairgrounds area.

The first will be done in 2015 and will add a left-turn lane at the signal at Fairgrounds and Central Valley roads to reduce the number of cars that line up. The second project would happen in 2017 and would add sidewalks to both sides of Fairgrounds Road between Nels Nelson and Central Valley roads.

There are no plans to add sidewalks to Central Valley, where a high number of elementary schoolchildren and older students walk to reach Woodlands Elementary, Cottonwood Elementary and Fairview Junior High.

Realizing there is limited money available for road projects — $60 million is dedicated over six years to projects that span the county — school district leaders and members of the community council brainstormed less expensive ways to increase pedestrian safety in the area.

Regularly talking with students about safe routes to school is one solution. Students sometimes assume drivers will see them and step into a crosswalk before making sure a car is stopping, said Fairview Principal Kathy Wales.

“Junior high students don’t always use the best judgment,” she said. “We worry about the mornings especially. It’s so dark once we get to October through to March, and traffic is so fast. Even when we had adults out there monitoring traffic, they were often afraid.”

After the high school student was hit last winter adults started manning the crosswalks along Central Valley Road. That’s a common practice for elementary students, but not older students. Wales guessed they would continue the practice next year.

Another tactic they’ve used is to place a large triangular cone in the middle of a crosswalk to gain the attention of drivers who might not otherwise see the markings. Woodlands Principal Jeff McCormick liked that idea, saying that’s something he would look into for his school.

Ideally, McCormick would like to see sidewalks added to the most-traveled roads around his school. So would Central Kitsap School District Superintendent Greg Lynch, but like McCormick he understands the financial restraints facing the county.

“I think most people want to be safe, it’s just getting the reminders out there,” he said.

Lynch talked with County Commissioner Josh Brown about a state mandate that will require school districts survey the safest roads around schools to create a safe-routes-to-school plan before next year. The plan will be available for parents and students at the start of the school year.

Brown and Shea were open to working with area school districts on those plans to make sure roads are properly marked to increase awareness among drivers and pedestrians.

“There are a lot of kids walking that road, and it’s a very dangerous road and there are no shoulders at all,” he said, asking whether the project could be moved up.

“What we’re trying to do is queue up projects so we can get them done over the next few years,” Brown said. “I appreciate if you’re a high school junior at Olympic right now it’s probably not going to be done until you’re a freshman in college, but it’s going to be done. We’re working to reduce the congestion and build a spine of sidewalks from those key intersections.”

Following the meeting, Brown said he would work with public works staff to see what can be done in the interim to increase awareness among drivers and pedestrians to improve safety along Central Valley.